Share “House GOP scrambles for votes on border bill”

House GOP scrambles for votes on border bill

Published on NewsOK
Modified: July 30, 2014 at 9:13 pm •
Published: July 30, 2014

Advertisement

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans, scrambling to win conservative support for a bill addressing the immigration crisis on the border, have scheduled a companion vote on legislation to block President Barack Obama from extending deportation relief to any more immigrants here illegally.

Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, arrives for a meeting of the Republican Conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, July 29, 2014. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The late-night maneuvering Wednesday came ahead of a planned vote Thursday on a $659 million bill to send resources to the border and to speed the return back home of unaccompanied Central American minors who've been arriving by the tens of thousands. Conservative support was lacking with time running short before lawmakers' annual August recess begins Friday.

To answer conservative desires to block Obama on immigration, GOP leadership agreed to a vote to do just that. After voting on the border bill the House will consider legislation preventing Obama from expanding an existing program that's granted work permits to more than 500,000 immigrants brought to this country illegally as kids and allowed them to stay here without threat of deportation.

White House officials have indicated plans to unilaterally expand that program, perhaps to millions more people, in the wake of the House's failure to act this year on a comprehensive immigration reform bill passed by the Senate. Republicans warn that would provoke a constitutional crisis and a few conservatives have said it would be grounds for impeachment.

Michael Steel, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, confirmed the new vote approach Wednesday night. It comes after outside conservative groups announced opposition to the House bill and tea party Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas summoned House conservatives to a meeting Wednesday evening to strategize against it.

The fast-moving developments would seem to ensure House passage of the border bill, yet did nothing to change the overall stalemate in Congress over the border crisis in South Texas. The White House issued a veto threat Wednesday against the House bill even as the Senate's much different measure cleared a procedural hurdle — likely just a temporary reprieve before its eventual defeat.

That left no apparent path for a compromise bill to reach Obama's desk before Congress' five-week recess, even as lawmakers in both parties said they wanted to act.

"My constituents back home don't understand why in the world we would leave without fixing this problem," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. "If we don't do anything to deal with the causes or deal with a remedy for this growing humanitarian crisis, it's going to get worse."